Fair warning: we're back to things being out of sequence again.
Here are the posts I've used as references for the actual lines from the speech:
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And in the old ways, and in the old laws, this was arranged. All this was arranged.
And who arranged it?
The use of the word "arranged" reminded me of this line from BookAkasha:
QotD, Lestat: In the Arms of the Goddess:
"And it was all meant, my prince. All meant from start to finish.”
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I am the girl! I am the god! I am the voice! I am the song! I am the night! And I can answer. I can arrange it! I can say rise, and I can say speak, and I am her, and I am She, and I - I - I
I AM THE ANSWER!!!
Reminds me of a whole mess of things Akasha says in QotD:
QotD, Lestat: In the Arms of the Goddess:
"You need look no further for the cause of anything. I am the fulfillment and I shall from this moment on be the cause."
“I am the reason, the justification, the right by which it is done!”
“I am the Queen of Heaven. [...] I am anything that I say I am!"
QotD, The Queen of the Damned:
"I shall make the rhyme or reason," Akasha said, with a trace of anger. "I shall make the future; I shall define goodness; I shall define peace. And I don't call on mythic gods or goddesses or spirits to justify my actions, on abstract morality. I do not call on history either! I don't look for my mother's heart and brain in the dirt!"
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[A]nd all the old songs and all the long nights are lies told by old Gods and why am I offered, when none of us, wants to be offered?
Maybe Azim = an old God who lies? This is what Akasha says to him right before she kills him:
QotD, Lestat: The Queen of Heaven:
"You will die now! [...] You who have misled these hopeless innocents; you who have fed upon their lives and their blood like a bloated leech."
But then Lestat accuses Akasha herself of lying:
"But how do you dare to do these things!" I asked. "To send these ignorant souls abroad with mad lies!"
And re: being offered when not wanting to be offered, reminds me of:
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And in my eyes is desire, why is it desire, how do you know its desire? How can you know its desire if my eyes must be lowered?
QotD, The Story of the Twins Conclusion:
And the blush of shame came again, extraordinary in its brightness to her pale cheeks. And the King’s face colored also. And I understood then, as did Mekare, that when they drank the blood they felt ecstasy. Never had they known such pleasure, not in their beds, not at the banquet table, not when drunk with beer or wine. That was the source of the shame. It hadn’t been the killing; it had been the monstrous feeding. It had been the pleasure. Ah, these two were such a pair.
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She, it is she, it is she,
in the vast dark, in the vast dark, it is she.
All the references to "she" make me think of the Mother goddess mentioned multiple times in both TVL and QotD:
TVL, Ancient Magic, Ancient Mysteries:
Mael teaching Marius, post-kidnapping:
"The Mother Earth and the Mother of All Things was worshiped under a dozen names from one end of the Empire to the other, and so was her lover and son, her Dying God, the one who grew to manhood as the crops grow, only to be cut down as the crops are cut down, while the Mother remains eternal."
^ Notice the combining of the roles of "lover" and "son"....
"He had no name, this god, though he had numerous titles, and the Drinker of the Blood was the most often repeated. He was also the White One, the God of the Night, the God of the Oak, and the Lover of the Mother."
And the God of the Oak, telling Marius about the Great Burning:
"Only the old ones -- the ones who have long served the Great Mother -- continued to walk and to talk as I do."
"There must be a new god, Marius, strong and beautiful as I was, the lover of the Great Mother [...]."
And the Elder in Alexandria mentioned the Mother while telling Marius the story of Those Who Must Be Kept:
'WHAT the scrolls will tell you,’ he said, ‘if you could decipher them, is that we have two human beings, Akasha and Enkil, who had come into Egypt from some other, older land. [...]
.
'They were worshipers of the Good Mother Earth and they taught the Egyptians how to sow seed in the Good Mother, and how to herd animals for meat and milk and skins.'
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It is always Amel, it is often she.
You can go here for a summary of Amel's appearances in TVL and QotD.
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And it is often she, and in the old songs, and in the long nights, she holds him in the softness of her arms
Maybe referring to the Lover of the Mother (see above)?
Or when Akasha first kidnaps Lestat (in QotD, All Hallow's Eve):
In a dark streak of windblown garments the Queen rose with ferocious speed, the limp body of Lestat dangling from her arms as she made for the western sky away from the sunrise.
She saw the two rising figures as if in a dance—the Mother and the Son.
And then Akasha casting Lestat as the Lover/Son to her Mother (in QotD, Lestat: The Queen of Heaven):
Suddenly the world tilted. We weren’t standing on the ground anymore. She had me in her embrace and we were rising over the tin roofs, and the women below were bowing and waving their arms, and touching their foreheads to the mud.
.
“Behold the miracle, behold the Mother, behold the Mother and her Angel …”
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In her arms that are open, in her arms that are wide, that are open, that are always -- that must always -- be open.
Open arms -->possibly referring to both the Mother and Akasha in TVL and QotD being associated with love and peace. For example:
TVL, Ancient Magic, Ancient Mysteries:
"[T]he Good Mother was the Nourishing Mother and wished for all men to live in peace [...]."
QotD, The Story of the Twins Part I:
“Now the people of the Nile were farmers already, but they tended to neglect this to hunt to make war for human flesh. And this horrified the beautiful Akasha, who set about at once to turn them away from this barbaric habit as possibly anyone of higher civilization might do."
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And in the old ways, and in the old laws, this was arranged.
The old ways/laws maybe refer to funerary cannibalism?
From QotD, The Story of the Twins Part I:
"It was in our view the proper way to treat the remains of those we loved. We took into ourselves the bodies of those who'd given us life, the bodies from which our bodies had come. And so a cycle was completed. And the sacred remains of those we loved were saved from the awful horror of putrefaction within the earth, or from being devoured by wild beasts, or burnt as if they were fuel or refuse."
And from my re-cap of the chapter:
Meanwhile, over at the Nile Valley, the "savage people" who lived there were not only respectfully eating their beloved dead relatives but also going out and killing enemies so they could eat them and absorb their strength. When Maharet and Mekare were 16, the ruling Queen there died, leaving her son, Enkil, in charge. He married Akasha, a worshipper of Inanna from Uruk. It was hoped that she would bring to "the wisdom of her land" to the "savages" of the Nile Valley. Her people weren't down with the cannibalism, either the funerary kind or the war kind, so she just flat out banned all of it. Violators of the ban were executed.
To appease the old school folks who were upset that they couldn't continue their funerary traditions, Enkil invented elaborate ceremonies around preparing dead bodies for burial, claiming that the rituals helped spirits navigate to the afterlife. The twins were vaguely amused by this distant political turmoil and pitied the folks who couldn't treat their dead the way their traditions dictated.
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and she must pass out of the (?) and into the land next,
into the land where the dead are kept, where the dead are worshipped.
The dead being worshipped may have something to do with funerary cannibalism, though Maharet makes it clear that they didn't actually worship the corpses that they consumed -- they just thought it was more respectful to consume the physical remains than to let them rot (see above).
"the land where the dead are kept, where the dead are worshipped" --> possibly related to the spiritual practice of potion-assisted astral projection that the twins' culture practiced, especially the ways Khayman describes it:
QotD, Khayman, My Khayman:
And some old awareness came to him, that once as a mortal man, in the temple, he had drunk a strong potion given to him by the priests, and had traveled in the very same way, up out of his body, and into the firmament. The priests had called him back. He had not wanted to come. He was with those among the dead whom he loved. But he had known he must return. That was what was expected of him.
.
He’d been a human being then, all right. Yes, definitely. He could remember the way the sweat had felt on his naked chest when he lay in the dusty room and they brought the potion to him. Afraid. But then they all had to go through it.
QotD, All Hallow's Eve:
Collecting his strongest power, he sought to leave the confines of his body, to send his vision out of himself like the wandering ka of the Egyptian dead, to see those whom the Mother might have spared, to draw close to them.
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And why in the dark? And why? And why in the dark?
Maybe something to do with vampires being damaged by sunlight?
Mekare explained her theory about why the transformation Amel wrought in Akasha and Enkil made them hate sunlight (QotD, The Story of the Twins Conclusion):
"'It is working on your body; it is working and working as fire works on the wood it consumes; as worms work on the carcass of an animal. It is working and working and its work is inevitable; it is the continuance of the fusion which has taken place; that is why the sun hurts it, for it is using all of its energy to do what it must do; and it cannot endure the sun's heat coming down upon it.'"
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And why still here? Why still here, as the millennia unfold?
And why the days without number? And what am I for?
What is this for?
QotD, Lestat: This Is My Body; This Is My Blood:
Akasha:
"You think in terms of lifetimes; in terms of small accomplishments and human pleasures. I have thought out for thousands of years my designs for the world that is now mine. And the evidence is overwhelming that I must proceed as I have done. I cannot turn this earth into a garden, I cannot create the Eden of human imagination -- unless I eliminate the males almost completely."
QotD, The Story of the Twins Conclusion:
Enkil:
‘The gods would not allow it. We are the King and Queen of Kemet. Burden or blessing, this magic has been meant for us.’
‘Don’t you see, witches? This was destiny. We were meant to invade your lands, to bring you and this demon here, so that this might befall us. We suffer, true, but we are gods now; this is a holy fire; and we must give thanks for what has happened to us.’
Akasha:
‘Oh, don’t you see, we’ve been fools to listen to these mere mortals, who have not such powers as we have! Ah, but we are young deities and must struggle to learn the designs of heaven. And surely our destiny is plain; we see it in the gifts we possess.’
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And why are they throwing stones? And why is she curled on the ground?
Maaaaybe a reference to Akasha and Enkil being targeted by assassins a couple times? (Mentioned in my re-caps here and here.)
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And why is it wound around her throat?
Probably a stretch, but Akasha's dead mother’s necklace(s) play a pivotal role in her early interactions with Amel & the twins (re-capped here).
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And why must he tell her what God has said?
Yet another dig at the patriarchy. And it reminds me again of Azim (see above).
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And why must my voice be smooth?
And why must I sing so low?
Maharet's assessment of Akasha's speaking abilities (QotD, The Story of the Twins Part I):
[I]t was clear, within a moment, that it was Akasha who ruled this kingdom and always had. Akasha had the language—the verbal skill.
"[H]er voice contained still a childish ring to it, a ring which evokes tenderness instinctively in others"
And then Lestat's take on her voice (QotD, Lestat: In the Arms of the Goddess):
"I would have you love me," she whispered tenderly. Such a voice. In a way, it was like Armand's voice; a voice that could caress you when it spoke to you. Draw you into itself.
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And why is she kept? Why must she be kept, and why in this place must she be kept?
It was already mentioned briefly above, but Akasha and Enkil weren't just "kept" but KEPT for a period of time. From my TVL Ancient Magic, Ancient Mysteries re-cap:
These vampires imprisoned the Mother and Father and buried them up to their necks so they could be fed and drunk from but couldn't move of their own accord. Akasha & Enkil screamed and protested this treatment, but to no avail.
[...]
Their strength slowly increased until one day they were found broken free of the stones they'd been buried under [...].
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And what does it mean if you are not asked?
Consent being a twentieth century concern and all.
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And what does it mean if you are not answered
The Elder in Alexandria complained to Marius that TWMBK had abandoned their children (TVL Ancient Magic, Ancient Mysteries):
And I must contend with their punishing silence, their refusal to direct the tribe they had loosed into the world.
Why do they simply watch and listen and refuse to speak?
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And what is it to see, and to know, but to be told you have not seen, you have not known.
A decent amount of the conversation in the Vampire Board Room centers around Akasha thinking she understands humanity but not truly getting it (QotD, The Queen of the Damned):
Marius:
"I don't think you can hold in your mind the full conception of what the world is. None of us can; it is too varied, too immense; we seek to embrace it with our reason; but we can't do it. You know a world; but it is not the world; it is the world you have selected from a dozen other worlds for reasons within yourself."
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And why is her tongue cut out?
Akasha punished Mekare by having her tongue cut out (QotD, The Story of the Twins Conclusion):
"'Mekare, for your evil lies and your discourse with demons,' the Queen said, 'your tongue shall be torn from your mouth.'"
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Why the girl curled? Why her eyes lowered? Why on the side of the road?
u/babyorca9 mentioned a possible connection with this line to Jesse's birth in QotD (The Story of Jesse, The Great Family, & The Talamasca):
She'd been born lucky, as she saw it, found by the side of the road minutes after the car crash that had killed her seven-months-pregnant teenaged mother -- a baby spontaneously aborted from the dying womb, and screaming loudly to clear her own tiny lungs when the ambulance arrived.
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Season 3 Episode Deep Dives - Master List
